ing, continued in use down to the days of Cicero. This machine, both in Greece and Italy, was at first commonly worked by women,1 more especially by female slaves. But afterward the rudest and worst conducted of the male domestics were condemned to this severe toil, which at length grew to be regarded in the light of a punishment, as working at the treadmill with us. Among the wealthy, each master of a family possessed his own mill; but as civilisation advanced, the grinding of corn constituted a separate occupation, and the trade of the miller was established. Public mills 3 were common at Athens in the time of Socrates, and it does not appear to have been unusual for strong and sturdy men of free condition to labour for hire in these establishments. Thus we find that the philosophers Menedemos and Asclepiades, when young and poor, earned their subsistence, and were enabled to pursue the study of philosophy, by working at night in a mill. As few persons knew this circumstance, and they were observed all day among the learned in the schools, some one brought against them an accusation of idleness, for which they were cited before the senate of Areopagos. In order to prove that they gained their livelihood in an honest way, the miller for whom they worked was brought forward. His testimony βίῳ τὴν τοῦ μύλου χρῆσιν. De Urb. et Popul. p. 570, seq. where we see the able and learned notes of Berkelius. 1 Who very commonly sang at their employment. Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 1339. Plut. Conviv. Sept. Sap. § 45. Poll. i. 80, informs us, that σιτοποιϊκὸς οἶκος was used by a kind of euphemism for μυλῶν. 3 Cf. Schol. Aristoph. Eq. 253. Watermills were known in antiquity. Vitruv. x. 10. Dempster on Rosin. i. 14. p. 87. Pignor. de Serv. 248. These mills were, doubtless, called into requisition in time of war, when the soldiers took along with them large quantities of cheese and meal. Schol. Aristoph. Pac. 304. The ancients appear to have been partial to small bread, since we find that four or even eight loaves were sometimes made from a choenix of flour. Schol. Vesp. 440. 4 Cleanthes, the disciple of Zeno, earned his subsistence by drawing water during the night. Suidas, in v. t. i. p. 1467. b. 2 confirmed their statement; and he added, moreover, that he paid to each of them two drachmas per night. The Areopagites were so pleased with this proof of their industry and passion for philosophy, that, on pronouncing their acquittal, they at the same time made them a present of two hundred drachmas.' But these mills were not always put in motion by the hand of man. Yoked to beams projecting from the upper millstone, oxen and asses, moving about in a circle, blindfold, as at present, when similarly employed, sometimes turned the mill instead of slaves. Upon the construction of these machines little exact information was possessed before the laying open of the ruins of Pompeii, where, in a baker's shop, four mills, still almost perfect, have been discovered. They consist of a round stone basement with a rim, from the centre of which springs a blunt cone: this is the nether millstone. The upper one consists of an imperfect cylinder, hollowed out within, like an hour-glass, one part of which fits like a cap upon the cone below, while the other expands its bell-mouth above. Into this the corn was poured, and, descending through four small apertures upon the nether stone, was, by the turning round of the upper one thereon, reduced to meal, which passed gradually down, fining as it went, and fell out upon the stone basement below. The corn having been ground, the next operation was, to sever the flour from the bran, though sometimes bread was made from it in the rough,3 and regarded, moreover, as extremely wholesome. First, and most simple of these contrivances, was the sieve,* made with slender rushes, which separated the coarse bran and produced a meal sufficiently cleansed for household bread. A much superior sieve was manufactured with linen threads, by which the flour was Athen. iv. 65. 2 Lucian, Luc. siv. Asin. § 41. Tin. § 23. 3 Cf. Dioscorid. ii. 107. Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 952; and Athen. iii. 83. ♦ Plin. xviii. 28. Goguet, i. 211. Sch. Aristoph. Vesp. 164. When it was bolted to a great degree of fineness. required of still superior purity and whiteness, the bolter would seem to have been bottomed with threads of woollen, which, being woven close, allowed nothing but particles of the utmost tenuity to pass. All the above operations were supposed to be placed under the superintendence of a particular deity named Eunostos, of whom no mention, I believe, is made in modern systems of mythology. 5 3 The ancients employed in the making of bread a great many kinds of grain besides wheat and barley; as rye, millet, which was little nourishing, panic, which was still less so, sesame, olyra, spelt, rice, tiphe, and a sort of grain from Ethiopia, called orindion. Several other substances were likewise used for the same purpose, not for the sake of adulteration, but either to improve the taste, or from reasons of economy; such as the root of the lotos, and, perhaps, of the day-lily dried, and reduced, like wheat itself, to flour; and the root of the corn-flag, 1 Tò ¿pyaλetov Evrà aλevpa ἐργαλεῖον ἐν ἄλευρα διεσήθετο, τὸ μὲν ἐκ σχοίνων πλέγμα, κόσκινον· εἰ δὲ τῷ κοσκί νου κύκλῳ ἀντὶ τοῦ σχοίνου λινοῦν τι σινδόνιον εἴη ἐξηρτημένον, ὡς ἀκριβέστερον τὸ ἄλευρον καθαίροιτο, αλευρότησις ἐκαλεῖτο· ἡ δὲ ἐξ ἐρίου, κρησέρα. Poll. Onomast. vi. 74. 2 Suid. v. Nooros. t. i. p. 241. Athen. xiv. 10. Hesych. v. EurooEustath. ad II. 6. 162. 21. Ad Odys. y. 754. 50. Etym. Mag. 394. 3. Poll. vii. 180. τος. 3 A fine light bread was made of the three months summer wheat. Dioscor. ii. 107. Others speak of this wheat as requiring four months to come to maturity: Οἱ σιτάνιοι ἄρτοι, ἐκ τῶν σιτανίων πυρῶν, οἵ εἰσιν οἱ τετράμηνοι. Poll. vi. 73. + Schol. Aristoph. Eq. 816. which was previously boiled, and, for the sake of communicating a sweet taste to the bread, would appear to have been mixed with the dough as the meal of the potato is in modern times. This plant grew most plentifully in grounds frequented by the mole, which loved to feed upon it. Another ingredient often mixed with bread was, the pulpy seed of the Star of Bethlehem,' of which the root likewise was eaten, both raw and cooked. 5 2 4 The seed of the pepper-wort, also, was sprinkled over cakes. Among the Thracians, about the river Strymon, they made bread from the flour of the water-caltron,3 a prickly root of a triangular form, which abounds in the lagoons about Venice, where it is sold commonly in the market-places, and roasted for the table in hot embers. The root of the dragon-wort, eaten both raw and cooked in Greece, was, in the Balearic isles, served up fried with honey at banquets instead of cakes. They gathered it in harvest time, and, having roasted, cut it in slices, which were then strung on a cord and dried in the shade for keeping. The seeds of the garden poppy were used in bread-making, perhaps like carraway-seeds with us, as were those of the wild poppy for medicinal purposes in honeycakes, and certain kinds of sweetmeats. They had in Syria a kind of bread made of mulberries, which caused the hair of those who habitually fed on it to fall off." Although in the establishments of the wealthy bread was usually made by the women of the family, whether servile or free, the art of the baker seems early to have been practised as a separate business, frequently at Athens by foreigners. The Lydian bakers, for example, like those of France 8 and Germany among us, enjoyed considerable celebrity, as did likewise the Cappadocians and Phoenicians, the art of the last having been able, it is said, to vary the qualities of the loaf every day in the year.1 Of the form and structure of a baker's establishment we may acquire some conception from the ruins of Pompeii, where the mills, the ovens, the kneading-troughs, small and great, would appear to have been sometimes of stone, though generally, perhaps, of wood. When the dough had been properly kneaded and leavened, it was removed to a table with a rim, and fashioned into a variety of forms by the hand or with moulds. The larger loaves were placed in rows in a capacious oven, in which wood had been burnt and raked out carefully. Sometimes, also, a fire would appear to have been kept up in an open space round the oven, having at the top a smoke vent. loaf was baked in a small fictile or iron oven, called cribanos, which was either placed on the fire, or surrounded by hot coals. There was another which they toasted before the fire on a spit; and a great variety of cakes were baked on the live coals, or in the ashes." One kind of These it would require a separate treatise to enu Greek bakers are in most request throughout the Levant. Wolf, Anti Mission. Research. p. 12. 2 Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 660, 666. 3 Cakes of leavened bread were called Supirai, those of unleavened bread avμo. Poll. vi. 32. 4 Schol. Aristoph. Acharn. 86. 5 Poll. vi. 75. Tzetz. Chiliad. vii. 770. 6 Athen. iii. 76. Some of these were reckoned so delicate as to create appetite, and to have the power of removing drunkenness, 74. At Athens one of the most thriving departments of the baker's business must have been supplying the fleets and merchantmen with biscuits, ἄρτοι ναυτικοὶ ξηροί, a sample of which we find a sailor presenting to his mistress. Luc. Dial. Meret. xiv. § 2. Cf. Poll. vii. 23. Athen. iii. 74. |